"This time of year, wildlife officials advise the public if you see a baby wild animal let it be — its mother is likely nearby. But there are instances when animals are orphaned and wildlife rehabilitators raise them. That’s the case with a bear cub whose mother and siblings were killed in western Massachusetts. [...] At the Kilham Bear Center, three female cubs were inside a 16-foot high barn with tree trunks that stretched up to bear-cub-sized nooks. One, named Willa, was whimpering. She was a little unsure of me. But when the bear from Greenfield arrived, now named Alma, Willa welcomed her with a kind of kiss. Willa just sort of puts her snout on top of Alma’s, and it was a pretty fast connection,' said Ethan Kilham, 34, who raises the bears there. That kind of bonding is typical of cubs this age. But Kilham said with Alma, Willa and the third one, Billie, it was instantaneous. 'They fell asleep in a big pile together. And they’ve been sisters ever since,' Kilham said. Sisters — and Ethan Kilham is a kind of mother. Not only to these three, but to at least 11 other bears born this year. One, named Dutch, came from Tolland, Massachusetts. And there are 19 others, much bigger ones, born more than a year ago. [...] The older cubs, who were born last year, live on 11 acres of woods hugged by an electric fence. Ethan Kilham still brings them food, and they also find their own. His uncle, Ben Kilham, points out the enclosure on top of some ledges. [...] Ben Kilham began developing this method of rehabilitating abandoned and orphaned cubs, like Alma, 30 years ago. [...] Using logic and knowledge about how wild cubs grow up, Ben Kilham developed a surrogate mother approach. With help from his wife, Debbie Kilham; his sister, Phoebe Kilham; and now Ethan, the Kilham Bear Center has raised and released nearly 400 cubs." Read More, See Photos & Videos

"A new law encouraging the development of wood-fired combined heat and power plants in Maine is drawing praise for its potential to benefit the economy and the environment. But some climate activists are skeptical, saying questions remain about whether the program will cut carbon emissions as intended. The legislation, signed by Gov. Janet Mills in April, establishes a program to commission projects that will burn wood to create electricity and also capture the heat produced for use on-site — heat that would go to waste in a conventional power plant. Proposals for these facilities are expected to come from forestry or forest products businesses that could use their own wood byproducts to fuel the plants, saving them money on heat and electricity costs and providing an extra revenue stream when excess power is sold back into the grid. [...] Supporters like Robbins say these facilities will uplift struggling sectors of the economy while helping reach the goals of Maine’s climate plan, which calls for the state to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050. Some environmental activists, however, doubt that wood can ever be an efficient fuel and worry that these projects will in fact increase carbon emissions." Read More More

"Debra David has lived in Dobbins Heights, North Carolina, population 875, for more than 60 years. Though she has moved several times over the decades, she’s always lived close to the railroad and the town’s higher-traffic thoroughfares. But it wasn’t until very recently that she developed asthma. In 2019 Enviva, a compressed wood pellet (also known as biomass) manufacturer, opened a new production plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, just down the road from David’s home. 'I’d never had a problem with asthma before,' she says. 'But the past two years, I started having it.' And David isn’t alone — her entire neighborhood is experiencing the same health issues. 'Of the eight houses on my block, every single one of them now has someone with asthma,' she says. 'Four households now have breathing machines. We’re getting nosebleeds, headaches, and breathing problems now that we didn’t have before. All that’s happened since the plant opened.' Heather Hillaker, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), has worked with communities impacted by wood pellet mills for years. She’s heard the same anecdotal stories of health issues correlating with new biomass plants often. 'These mills are often built in low-wealth communities of color, and people say the same things over and over once the mills start operating: Their breathing issues or eye, nose, and throat irritation have increased,' she says. 'The problem is that no one is tracking these health impacts.' Hillaker and the team from SELC, along with the Environmental Integrity Project, helped David and other Dobbins Heights residents, through non-profit CleanAIRE NC, file a lawsuit to force the Hamlet plant to implement pollution monitoring and controls, reaching a settlement that, among other things, required the plant to install controls that would reduce the pollutants it emits by 95%. Enviva is now implementing those pollution controls on all its new plants. [...] For decades, William Moomaw, a climate scientist affiliated with Tufts University, has helped shape global climate research and policy. [...] 'These companies claimed that they only use logging residues, but they were basically misrepresenting what they were doing,' he says. 'I’ve seen the drone images. They were using mostly whole trees. They would say they were only using deformed or sick trees, but in fact, they took them all.' Investigations by news outlets ranging from the UK’s channel 4 news program to the Wall Street Journal have documented the same pattern of biomass companies sourcing from the clearcutting of U.S. forests to feed overseas demand. [...] The United States’ biomass industry was built on promises that the companies would make wood pellets using waste from logging operations, such as wood chips, sawdust, or unusable branches, which led some European governments to categorize biomass as a renewable energy source. 'They made some wrong assumptions that biomass would use waste wood to burn for energy,' says SELC attorney David Carr. 'But a large volume of waste wood was never available. So now the only place to turn [to meet the demand] is to cut down trees.' Carr estimates that around 80% of Enviva’s wood pellet production comes from the cutting of living forests. Indeed, the biomass industry has metastasized so quickly that companies are now cutting down trees across a swath of the Southeastern U.S., from Texas to the Atlantic Coast, to fulfill the demand for this unsustainable energy source. The plant near Debra David’s home is just one of the 23 currently operating large-scale wood pellet plants, and more are on the way. As of December 2021, 11 new wood pellet plants were at the proposal or construction stage in the U.S. — including two that, when completed, will be the largest in the world." Read More

"Attorney General Maura Healey announced Wednesday the state is suing 13 manufacturers of toxic PFAS compounds, including chemical giants 3M and DuPont, for producing and selling firefighting foam that contains the chemicals. 'Their actions violate state and federal laws that are intended to protect our residents and place costly burdens on our communities that are now forced to clean up this mess,' Healey said in a press conference. 'These are manufacturers who attempted to hide just how dangerous this foam was, who prevented their workers from discussing the dangers of their products. Despite the fact that PFAS was toxic, these makers continued to make and sell their products without disclosing the harms.' House Speaker Pro Tempore Kate Hogan, who represents Hudson, Stow and other towns now struggling to clean up PFAS, said efforts to remove the contamination are expensive and difficult, especially for small towns. 'At present, the cost of PFAS cleanup of our drinking water is borne by the very same homeowners, taxpayers and ratepayers who have discovered PFAS in their drinking water,' Hogan said. Chemicals from firefighting foam can leach into surface and groundwater from airports, fire academies and military bases. [...] Recent analyses found PFAS in Massachusetts public water systems, Cape Cod ponds and many Massachusetts rivers, pointing to widespread contamination throughout state lakes, ponds, rivers and aquifers used for drinking water." Read More  

"The U.S. Department of Energy aims to build up domestic production of solar panels, electric transformers, heat pumps, insulation and hydrogen-related equipment under the Defense Production Act, or DPA, determinations issued Monday by the White House. [...] The DOE could support those sectors through commitments to buy clean energy products from U.S. manufacturers; direct investments in facilities; and aid for clean energy installations in homes, military sites and businesses, Charisma Troiano, department press secretary, said in an email. [...] The Biden administration’s move to use its executive power is a 'game changer' that will establish and bolster a manufacturing base to support the renewable energy transition, according to Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity." Read More

"To scare off potential predators, some animals display the traits of more deadly creatures. A scarlet kingsnake, for example, wears a red, black and yellow striped pattern similar to that of a venomous coral snake; innocuous butterfly species display the same beautiful splashes of color on their wings as their noxious relatives; and nestlings of species of Amazonian bird are thought to avoid predation by exhibiting the movement and bright orange hue of a toxic caterpillar. These evolutionary adaptations are examples of Batesian mimicry — named after the 19th-century British naturalist Henry Walter Bates — when harmless species evade predators by mimicking more dangerous species that their hungry foes know to avoid. Most instances of Batesian mimicry that have been discovered are visual. In comparison, there are few examples of mimicry with sound. 'Acoustic mimicry is very rarely documented in nature,' said Leonardo Ancillotto, an ecologist at the University of Naples Federico II. Dr. Ancillotto and colleagues have discovered not only a new case of acoustic Batesian mimicry, but also the first documented between mammals and insects. In their work, published Monday in the journal Current Biology, they report a species of bat that mimics the buzzing sound of stinging insects like hornets to deceive owls that might otherwise eat them. [...] To test if these buzzing bats do in fact mimic buzzing insects to evade predators, the researchers focused on hornets, bees and two owl species common to the bat’s geographic range. Wild owls likely to have come across a stinging insect before and owls raised in captivity were both included in the study. The researchers collected data on how the owls behaved while audio of a variety of sounds were played over a speaker. The owls generally moved away from the speaker when they heard any buzzing, and approached it in response to a non-buzzing bat’s social call. But the response of the wild owls was far more pronounced than the response of owls raised in captivity, supporting the researchers’ hypothesis that the greater mouse-eared bat adapted to evade predators by mimicking the sound of stinging insects that their predators knew to avoid. The researchers also discovered after analysis of the audio that the owls, because of their hearing range, would find the bats and hornets particularly similar sounding." Read More

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must update and improve habitat protections for the state’s ailing manatees over the next two years, under a legal agreement announced this week. [...] Under the agreement, U.S. Fish and Wildlife has until Sept. 12, 2024 to revise the manatee’s critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act. The Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Save the Manatee Club, which brought the lawsuit, say the critical habitat, a legal term encompassing waterways considered vital to the manatee’s recovery, has not been updated since 1976. [...] The conservation groups petitioned U.S. Fish and Wildlife back in 2008 to update and strengthen the manatee’s critical habitat, and in 2009 and again in 2010 the agency acknowledged the update was warranted. But at the time U.S. Fish and Wildlife said it lacked the funding for the effort because of 'higher priority actions such as court-ordered listing-related actions and judicially approved settlement agreements,' according to the groups. After the groups made the settlement public this week the agency issued a statement that it was committed to the revision." Read More